Tutorials: C++ Made Easy

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W E L C O M E
To the VGA Trainer Program
By
DENTHOR of ASPHYXIA
(updated by Snowman)
;
--==[ PART 6 ]==--
[Note: things in brackets have been added by Snowman. The original text
has remained mostly unaltered except for the inclusion of C++ material]
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Introduction
Hi there! I'm back, with the latest part in the series : Pregenerated
arrays. This is a fairly simple concept that can treble the speed of
your code, so have a look.
I still suggest that if you haven't got a copy of TEXTER that you get it.
This is shareware, written by me, that allows you to grab fonts and use
them in your own programs.
I downloaded the Friendly City BBS Demo, an intro for a PE BBS, written
by a new group called DamnRite, with coder Brett Step. The music was
excellent, written by Kon Wilms (If I'm not mistaken, he is an Amiga
weenie ;-)). A very nice first production, and I can't wait to see more
of their work. I will try con a local BBS to allow me to send Brett some
fido-mail.
If you would like to contact me, or the team, there are many ways you
can do it : 1) Write a message to Grant Smith in private mail here on
the Mailbox BBS.
2) Write a message here in the Programming conference here
on the Mailbox (Preferred if you have a general
programming query or problem others would benefit from)
3) Write to ASPHYXIA on the ASPHYXIA BBS.
4) Write to Denthor, Eze or Livewire on Connectix.
5) Write to : Grant Smith
P.O.Box 270 Kloof
3640
Natal
6) Call me (Grant Smith) at (031) 73 2129 (leave a message if you
call during varsity)
NB : If you are a representative of a company or BBS, and want ASPHYXIA
to do you a demo, leave mail to me; we can discuss it.
NNB : If you have done/attempted a demo, SEND IT TO ME! We are feeling
quite lonely and want to meet/help out/exchange code with other demo
groups. What do you have to lose? Leave a message here and we can work
out how to transfer it. We really want to hear from you!

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Why do I need a lookup table? What is it?
A lookup table is an imaginary table in memory where you look up the
answers to certain mathematical equations instead of recalculating them
each time. This may speed things up considerably. Please note that a
lookup table is sometimes referred to as a pregenerated array.
One way of looking at a lookup table is as follows : Let us say that for
some obscure reason you need to calculate a lot of multiplications (eg.
5*5 , 7*4 , 9*2 etc.). Instead of actually doing a slow multiply each
time, you can generate a kind of bonds table, as seen below :
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Ķ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Ĵ
2 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Ĵ
3 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
Ĵ
4 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36
Ĵ
5 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Ĵ
6 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54
Ĵ
7 7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63
Ĵ
8 8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72
Ĵ
9 9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81
This means that instead of calculating 9*4, you just find the 9 on the
top and the 4 on the side, and the resulting number is the answer. This
type of table is very useful when the equations are very long to do.
The example I am going to use for this part is that of circles. Cast
your minds back to Part 3 on lines and circles. The circle section took
quite a while to finish drawing, mainly because I had to calculate the
SIN and COS for EVERY SINGLE POINT. Calculating SIN and COS is obviously
very slow, and that was reflected in the speed of the section.
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How do I generate a lookup table?
[Note: the following paragraph contains a significant error. In the
middle of the paragraph, Denthor says that 360 / 0.4 = 8000. Last I
checked, 360 / 0.4 = 900. As a result, I have changed the C++ code to
reflect this. However, I have left this document fairly unaltered.
So whenever you see a Denthor reference to 8000, you now know why I am
using 900.]
This is very simple. In my example, I am drawing a circle. A circle has
360 degrees, but for greater accuracy, to draw my circle I will start
with zero and increase my degrees by 0.4. This means that in each circle
there need to be 8000 SINs and COSes (360/0.4=8000). Putting these into
the base 64k that Pascal allocates for normal variables is obviously not
a happening thing, so we define them as pointers in the following manner:
[Pascal]
TYPE table = Array [1..8000] of real;
VAR sintbl : ^table;
costbl : ^table;
[C++]
const TABLESIZE = 900;
float *costbl=NULL;
float *sintbl=NULL;
Then in the program we get the memory for these two pointers. Asphyxia
was originally thinking of calling itself Creative Reboot Inc., mainly
because we always forgot to get the necessary memory for our pointers.
(Though a bit of creative assembly coding also contributed to this. We
wound up rating our reboots on a scale of 1 to 10 ;-)). The next obvious
step is to place our necessary answers into our lookup tables. This can
take a bit of time, so in a demo, you would do it in the very beginning
(people just think it's slow disk access or something), or after you
have shown a picture (while the viewer is admiring it, you are
calculating pi to its 37th degree in the background ;-)) Another way of
doing it is, after calculating it once, you save it to a file which you
then load into the variable at the beginning of the program. Anyway,
this is how we will calculate the table for our circle :
[Pascal]
Procedure Setup;
VAR deg:real;
BEGIN
deg:=0;
for loop1:=1 to 8000 do BEGIN
deg:=deg+0.4;
costbl^[loop1]:=cos (rad(deg));
sintbl^[loop1]:=sin (rad(deg));
END;
END;
[C++] [Note: I have included "Setup" within the LookupCirc() function]
deg = 0.0;
for (loop1=0;loop1<TABLESIZE;loop1++) {
costbl[loop1] = cos(rad(deg));
sintbl[loop1] = sin(rad(deg));
deg += 0.4;
}
This will calculate the needed 12000 reals and place them into our two
variables. The amount of time this takes is dependant on your computer.
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How do I use a lookup table?
This is very easy. In your program, wherever you put
[Pascal] cos (rad(deg))
[C++] cos (rad(deg))
you just replace it with :
[Pascal] costbl^[deg]
[C++] costbl[deg]
Easy, no? Note that the new "deg" variable is now an integer, always
between 1 and 8000.
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Where else do I use lookup tables?
Lookup tables may be used in many different ways. For example, when
working out 3-dimensional objects, sin and cos are needed often, and are
best put in a lookup table. In a game, you may pregen the course an
enemy may take when attacking. Even saving a picture (for example, a
plasma screen) after generating it, then loading it up later is a form
of pregeneration.
When you feel that your program is going much too slow, your problems
may be totally sorted out by using a table. Or, maybe not. ;-)
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In closing
As you have seen above, lookup tables aren't all that exciting, but they
are useful and you need to know how to use them. The attached sample
program will demonstrate just how big a difference they can make.
Keep on coding, and if you finish anything, let me know about it! I
never get any mail, so all mail is greatly appreciated ;-)
Sorry, no quote today, it's hot and I'm tired. Maybe next time ;-)
- Denthor